Live Text was one of iOS 15’s best additions, giving you the ability to capture text in images and copy it as easily as you would text from a web page, note, or document. The function comes back in iOS 16with a few more tricks up his sleeve.
Live Text has already proven to be quite useful, so you can copy and paste text from photos into almost any app that accepts text. (Think Notes, Safari, and Mail, among others.) You can also turn to Live Text to capture phone numbers and dial them, or look up addresses in the Maps app just by tapping the text you’ve captured.
For Live Text in iOS 16, Apple is expanding the features from photos to video. It also adds quick actions that increase the usability of captured text. And there are some other changes coming when the full iOS 16 update comes this fall.
These are certainly not drastic or extensive changes, but they are significant enough to make iOS 16’s version of Live Text a much more valuable feature for iPhone owners. And that iOS 15 the version was already quite impressive.
We got a preview of iOS 16’s new Live Text features at last month’s WWDC, and since then, the developer work of iOS 16 has given early testers the chance to explore Live Text even more. Here’s what you can expect from Live Text if you download iOS 16 public beta when it comes later in July.
iOS 16 Live Text: Which iPhones support it
Live Text requires a lot of intelligence on the device to handle its text collection tricks, so this feature will not be available for all iPhones that can run iOS 16. But there is some good news – if you had an iPhone that could support Live Text in iOS 15, nothing changes with Devices supported by iOS 16.
That means you need a phone with an A12 Bionic or later. The A12 debuted with the iPhone XR, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max 2018. So if you have one of these models or something newer (including either the 2022 or 2020 edition of the iPhone SE), you should be ready.
Given that iOS 16 requires at least one iPhone 8, there are not many models that can run the new iOS that is on the outside and looking at Live Text. Apart from the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, the original iPhone X does not have the processing power to support Live Text.
iOS 16 Live Text: Capture text displayed in video
The biggest change to Live Text in iOS 16 is a natural extension of what the feature can already do. Previously, you could turn to Live Text to extract text from photos; now you can do the same with videos.
There are some caveats of course. You have to pause the video to capture all the text displayed in the image, so in a way this is still capturing text from a static image instead of a moving image, but it’s still an impressive feat to make.
Just like with Live Text in photos, you will be able to copy / paste, translate and look up all the text you have captured from a video. Live text from videos will also support quick action, which we’ll talk about in a moment. The feature works with video in Photos, Safari and other apps.
iOS 16 Live Text: Quick action
In iOS 16, you can do more than just copy the text you have captured. New quick action buttons will appear for certain text that provide relevant entry key actions for any text that has been selected.
Say you have selected some French text – a translate button will appear just below it to convert that text to English. Or if you have chosen a price that is in euros or pounds, you will see a quick action button that offers you to convert it to US dollars.
Other quick steps include flight tracking, creating calendar events, creating an email (probably if Live Text selects an email address) and old standby modes such as looking up addresses and calling phone numbers.
iOS 16 Live Text: About to translate
You are not limited to translating text from your photo roll or in the Camera app. iOS 16’s Translate app gets a camera tab where you will be able to take pictures from within the app and translate text into a wide selection of languages.
iOS 16 Live Text: Other changes
iOS 16 expands the number of languages supported by Live Text, with Japanese, Korean and Ukrainian joining the mix. During its WWDC iOS 16 preview, Apple promised developers a Live Text API to add text collection to their own apps.
#iOS #Live #Text #biggest #iPhone